A Rich Life

The Old Ideas on Saving & Investing Don't Work -- Here's What Does

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“We Are Living in a Strange Twilight Zone Time-Period Where for the First Time in History We Know How to Reduce the Risk of Stock Investing Dramatically But in Which We Don’t Tell People About It Because We Fear the Wrath of the People Who Got Us on the Right Track in the First Place But Now Engage in Insanely Abusive Practices Aimed at Blocking Us From Spreading the Word. There Is No Conflict Between Loving Buy-and-Holders and Hating the Tactics That a Small Number of Buy-and-Holders Have Employed to Stop the Idea of Rooting One’s Investing Decisions in the Peer-Reviewed Research From Achieving its Full Potential.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

It is interesting that you say “thanks ” and warm wishes here, yet you call people “goons” and tell them they are going to prison on your own blog. Why the two different personalities?

There’s only one personality, Sammy.

I love my Buy-and-Hold friends. The Buy-and-Holders were the pioneers. There would be no Valuation-Informed Indexing today had not Buy-and-Hold come first. Jack Bogle is properly seen as a hero by millions of middle-class investors. I learned to use the peer-reviewed research as my guide to how stock investing works from Jack Bogle.

I also learned about the errors in the Old School safe withdrawal rate studies from reading one of Jack’s books. He said that it is an “Iron Law” of stock investing that prices always revert to the mean. If that is so, then there is zero chance that the safe withdrawal rate could be a constant number (it was once thought that the SWR was always 4 percent). If Jack is right that prices always revert to the mean, then the SWR must VARY with changes in the valuation level; there is going to be more reversion (prices falling over time) when prices are insanely high than there will be when prices are only a little high. I could not have put up my famous post of the morning of May 13, 2002 (the post that kicked off the 14-year saga in which I have tried to spread the word about Valuation-Informed Indexing and in which I have connected with thousands of ordinary investors anxious to learn what I have to share and in which you Goons have engaged in brutally abusive posting to block them from learning what they want and need to learn) without having learned what I learned from Jack. Jack Bogle got this all off the ground. I rate Bogle as the second most important investing analyst of all time (second only to Robert Shiller).

I consider myself a Boglehead. I do NOT consider myself a Lindauerhead. It’s in the difference between Jack Bogle and Mel Lindauer (one of the leaders of you Goons) that the Goon part of our story enters the picture.

Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research in 1981. If humans were perfect creatures Bogle would have at that time acknowledged that he made a mistake re valuations and we all would have quickly become Valuation-Informed Indexers and we would not be living through an economic crisis today. We are not perfect creatures. Bogle had a lot invested in the Buy-and-Hold concept as he originally envisioned it. He couldn’t accept what Shiller showed. He fell victim to cognitive dissonance. He went into self-denial. He ignored Shiller’s revolutionary findings. He continued to push the same old Buy-and-Hold stuff and he continued to make the no longer accurate claim that the peer-reviewed research supported Buy-and-Hold (Shiller’s finding that valuations affect long-term returns discredited Fama’s finding that the market is efficient — if the market were efficient, returns would play out in the pattern of a random walk).

In a practical sense, none of this mattered much in 1981. Valuations were at rock-bottom lows. It was hard for anyone to imagine that we would ever again see fair-value price levels, much less prices levels at double fair-value levels or at triple fair-value levels (which is what we saw in January 2000). So “experts” continued to push Buy-and-Hold and investors of course ate it up. The Buy-and-Holders were telling people that their bull market gains were real, that they were much farther along in the financing of their retirements than the peer-reviewed research showed them to be — We all are drawn to Get Rich Quick schemes! Buy-and-Hold — intended to serve as a research-backed strategy had been transformed into the polar opposite, the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind.

I entered the scene on May 13, 2002. I politely pointed out that, if what Bogle said was so, the safe withdrawal rate was not a constant number but a number that varied with changes to valuation levels (dropping to 1.6 at times of high valuations and rising to 9.0 percent at times of low valuations). What I didn’t know was that the investing advice game was no longer on the level. The experts in this field had been covering up Shiller’s revolutionary finding for 21 years at that time. I thought that I was doing something obviously good by applying Shiller’s finding to our understanding of how to go about planning our retirements. In the eyes of the experts in this field, I was doing something very bad and threatening, exposing a cover-up that was in the process of destroying millions of middle-class lives.

I oppose the cover-up, Sammy. And I of course oppose the insanely abusive practices that have been employed to keep the cover-up going for the past 14 years. I call those who employ such tactics “Goons” not because I feel some personal dislike for them. I call them Goons because it is my job to tell the story as accurately as I can and the word “Goons” conveys the point that needs to be made. The fact that Buy-and-Holders almost universally either engage in these tactics themselves or tolerate the use of these tactics by others shows that they lack confidence that their ideas can be defended in reasoned discussion. The Buy-and-Holders still follow Buy-and-Hold strategies. But they no longer possess confidence that they can defend their ideas in a fair fight. That’s telling. That’s something that every investor alive needs to know.

I have learned a great deal from my Buy-and-Hold friends and I continue to learn from them and I expect to continue to learn from them for many years into the future. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the realization of Bogle’s dream — it is the first true research-backed stock investing strategy. I am always going to be in debt to my Buy-and-Hold friends and I of course am always going to wish them well in all their endeavors. My expressions of warmth and friendship and gratitude toward my many Buy-and-Hold friends (including you!) are 100 percent sincere.

The Goon stuff HURTS my Buy-and-Hold friends. They need to incorporate the findings of the last 35 years of peer-reviewed research to make their strategy work in the real world. The Goon stuff makes people afraid to speak out about their true beliefs re how stock investing works. People do not want to see their loved ones threatened with physical violence. People do not want to see their careers destroyed. We are living in a strange Twilight Zone time-period where for the first time in history we know how to reduce the risk of stock investing dramatically but in which we don’t tell people about it because we fear the wrath of the people who got us on the right track in the first place but now engage in insanely abusive practices aimed at blocking us from spreading the word about what the peer-reviewed research really says. Humans!

There is no conflict between loving Buy-and-Holders and hating the tactics that a small number of Buy-and-Holders have employed to stop the idea of rooting one’s investing decisions in the peer-reviewed research from achieving its full potential. Permitted honest posting on all these matters is a win/win/win/win/win. It is not even possible to imagine how anyone could be harmed by learning more about what the research actually says. The Goon stuff is the OPPOSITE of what Buy-and-Hold stood for in its early days. Buy-and-Hold was about employing science in the investing realm. The Goon stuff is about BLOCKING the advance of scientific findings.

I hope that helps a bit, Sammy. I love it that you care about this stuff and that you once had an intense desire to learn as much as you could about it. I even love your skepticism. Your skepticism has made me work hard to sharpen my thinking and that of course helps me and all who read the words that I generate. I HATE the abusive stuff that you advance when you are stuck for responses to my references to the findings of the peer-reviewed research of the past 35 years. I call you a “Goon” when you stoop to becoming something lower than what I know from experience you are capable of being. I want you to be the best Sammy that you can be. As your friend, I want to discourage your Goon tendencies. I would feel that I had let you down as a friend if I failed to ever comment on them.

I naturally wish you the best of luck in all your future life endeavors, old friend.

Rob

“Shiller’s Book Was a Best-Seller. There Have to Be Hundreds of Thousands of People Who Have Read It and Find Value in It. So at the Starting Point There Is Zero Problem Getting People Interested in or Convinced of the Merit of the Ideas. The Problem Comes With Developing the Ideas. My Project Is to DEVELOP Shiller’s Revolutionary Insight That Valuations Affect Long-Term Returns. The Buy-and-Holders Want to Continue the Cover-Up. I Want to Expose It.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

I am not sure why you need all these other people to lead with ‘your’ ideas. Can’t you figure out how to drive support yourself? Not phantom ‘thousands’ of make believe people. Real, actual, people.

Shiller’s book was a best-seller. I don’t know how many copies it sold. But it is carried in just about every library of consequence in the nation. So there have to be hundreds of thousands of people who have read it and who find value in it. These people carry these ideas around in their head every day and everywhere they go. So at the starting point there is zero problem getting people interested in or convinced of the merit of the ideas.

The problem comes with developing the ideas. Shiller’s core point is a simple one — Valuations matter. If you asked people whether they agree that valuations matter, you would get millions who would say “yes.” Even most Buy-and-Holders would say “yes” to that. I was a Buy-and-Holder once upon a time. I would have said “yes” if I was asked “Do valuations matter?” Why did I remain a Buy-and-Holder if I rejected the core premise of Buy-and-Hold (that stock market returns play out in the pattern of a random walk, that valuations do NOT matter)? Was I stupid?

I wasn’t stupid. I hadn’t thought through the implications of the idea that valuations matter. The idea that valuations matter and the idea that market returns play out in the pattern of a random walk contradict each other — it’s a logical impossibility that both are so. So the collection of beliefs about how stock investing works that I held in my head at that time was logically inconsistent. It would have been fair to have said that in an overall sense my understanding of how stock investing works was “stupid.” The softer and more accurate way of saying things would have been to say that I hadn’t thought things through, that I failed to examine my collection of beliefs for inconsistencies.

We advance as a people in our understanding of how the world works by DEVELOPING the ideas that we hold. My project is to DEVELOP Shiller’s “revolutionary” (his word) insight that valuations affect long-term returns. I’ve done a lot of that over the past 14 years and I intend to do a whole lot more of it in the remaining years of my life. But it is obviously not going to be just me doing that. Shiller will be further developing his insight. And Pfau will be developing Shiller’s insight. And John Walter Russell developed Shiller’s insight in many significant ways. And Arnott developed Shiller’s insight in important ways. We all should be doing that. Shiller’s core insight is a gold mine. It is the most important insight in the history of investing analysis by a long shot. It will take many decades for us to fully develop that powerful insight.

Does that answer your question, Laugh? Its not just me who needs what I am seeking to obtain. We all need it. We all are in the same boat. We live under an economic system that cannot survive unless we find some means to get accurate and honest information about how to finance a retirement out to millions of people who work for a living. Many years ago the Buy-and-Holders made a mistake about how that should be done. They were embarrassed when the mistake was uncovered by the peer-reviewed research. They went into cover-up mode and now, 35 years later, the cover-up continues. They cannot bear to have people learn the realities of how stock investing works but the economic system that serves all of us will collapse unless the cover-up ends. We all desperately want and need the same thing, a complete and total good. But the Buy-and-Holders cannot bear to face the shame they will need to endure when the cover-up is exposed.

What I need is for the cover-up to be exposed. It’s the same thing you need. It’s the same thing that every last person on the planet needs. We need to advance human knowledge of how stock investing works. It’s all upside, zero possible downside. But the Buy-and-Holders are worried that they will go to prison if people learn the realities or that they will be sued for not telling their clients the truth or that they will be embarrassed for not themselves having explored the realities for 35 years. That’s the resistance. That is what is holding us back. It’s that cover-up that caused the economic crisis.

The Buy-and-Holders want to continue the cover-up. I want to expose the cover-up. That’s the conflict. It’s weird. It’s strange. But it’s not complicated. They made a mistake. They are ashamed. So they want to shut people up. I love my country. So I want to see the people who live in it thrive. This is an easy way to improve people’s lives in a very dramatic way, to make it possible for them to retire many years sooner and to invest in stocks with much less risk. Why would any sane person not want that? If the Buy-and-Holders had never engaged in a cover-up, they would want it too. Bogle wants what I want. Had Bogle known in 1981 where his cover-up was going to take us, he never would have engaged in it. Bogle and I want the same thing. We are soul-mates who ended up on different sides of an important question because we faced different circumstances in our respective journeys through life.

I hope that I am being responsive to your question, Laugh. I have zero problem driving support for “my” ideas. 80 percent of the population is interested in learning the realities and loves finding opportunities to learn more. We have seen that since the morning of May 13, 2002. That’s precisely the problem from the standpoint of you Goons. If there weren’t such an intense demand to learn more among the general population of investors, you Goons would never have engaged in such insanely abusive tactics to block people from learning what they need and want to learn. 35 years down the road, the Buy-and-Holders are desperate. My life happened to play out in a way that I felt the brunt of that desperation being applied to me.

Once your prison sentence is announced, there won’t be any issue. No one is going to block anyone from talking about whatever they want to talk about once your prison sentence is announced. I mean, come on. There will still be Buy-and-Holders in the early days. There are millions of sincere Buy-and-Holders today. But there will be fewer and fewer of them as time goes no and as the discussions continue at hundreds of different places and as more and more implications of Shiller’s core insight are discovered and developed. It will just get better and better and better for every last one of us and there will be no “controversy” whatsoever about how we will all be working together to continue that process.

There has never been any legitimate controversy here. The problem going back to the morning of May 13, 2002, was the cover-up and the shame that you Buy-and-Holders felt over it. The cover-up had been in place for 21 years at that time. Greaney lied about the safe withdrawal rate. He knew it. He is too smart not to have known that his retirement study lacked an adjustment for the valuation level that applied on the day the retirement began. But of course on another level of consciousness he DIDN’T know. He saw all the experts ignoring this critical dimension of the problem and he convinced himself (in a tentative, uneasy, unconfident way) that it was okay for him too to ignore this dimension of the problem. When he was called out in it, he became enraged because he was embarrassed to be seen to have gotten so important a number so wildly wrong and annoyed that he had been called out for doing something that hundreds far more expert than he had done before him.

What I want to do is to develop the ideas. And to see thousands of others develop the ideas. I want our society to continue to advance in its knowledge, as it has for over two-hundred years now (longer than that if you include years before the American experiment in self-governance began). I want the world to continue on the path it has been on since the beginning of time, a path of discovering and taking advantage of new knowledge. If you were not in such pain about the mistake you made, you would want that too. You are happy to see advances in every other field of human endeavor. It is only in the investing field that you adopt this odd stance of being willing to fight to the death any advance in knowledge. You do that because it hurts you to see with numbers how much you have hurt yourself by falling for a Get Rich Quick scheme. It pains you to see that you are just like the Madoff investors, every bit as capable as they were of getting caught up in the emotion of stock investing and convincing yourself of things that cannot possibly be so (I of course did the same thing at one time).

That’s how I see things, in any event. I want what you want. But I am able to act on it. I am able to take steps to achieve my goals. You are trapped by your shame into fighting progress. If you weren’t so trapped, you wouldn’t have to ask these questions. It would be obvious to you why so many of us want to move forward in our understanding of how stock investing works. It’s not even a tiny bit hard to understand for anyone capable of thinking straight. You find it impossible to understand because you are filled to the brim with all of the negative emotions that follow once one becomes addicted to a pure Get Rich Quick approach.

I hope that in time you will be able to recover from your addiction. It is certainly my intent to help that process along whenever I have an opportunity to do so. I cannot force you to go somewhere that you don’t want to go. I respond to questions, that’s all. If they help, they help. If you cannot bear to hear the answers at this time, it might be that someone else will read these words that will find some benefit in hearing the words that I directed to you. You never know who is reading your words when you post them to the internet. I didn’t know that Wade Pfau was reading my words when I posted them to the Bogleheads Forum until he wrote me following the ban and asked to partner with me in preparing what I think it would be fair to describe as the most important research project in this field in the past three decades. I put the words out hoping that they would do some good and in time I saw a big payoff. That’s how it plays out over and over again. That’s why I write the words that I write for you here today.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, my old friend.

Rob

Valuation-Informed Indexing #295: Buy-and-Holders Predict Future Returns Every Day While ClaimingThat Predictions Don’t Work

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I’ve posted Entry #295 to my weekly Valuation-Informed Indexing column at the Value Walk site. It’s called Buy-and-Holders Predict Future Returns Every Day While Claiming That Predictions Don’t Work.

Juicy Excerpt: A poster at the Bogleheads Forum once stated this idea in compelling fashion: “I don’t go into a bank and say ‘I’d like to buy three certificates of deposit’ without first asking what rate of return applies — Why should it be different when I buy stocks?”

“The Buy-and-Holders Have Given Up the Effort to Make a Rational Case for Their Beliefs. They Are Almost Always Either Abusive or Silent. It’s Terribly Sad.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for another blog entry at this site:

Um no. This is exactly the result we should expect to see if PE/10 just isn’t that useful.

I had a short internal debate at to whether to approve this comment or not, Anonymous.

The case for approving it is that all signs are that you are sincere in what you say here. You don’t believe that P/E10 is too useful. There are obviously millions of others who feel the same way. So that point of view deserves to be heard.

The other side of the story is that you make no effort to make any rational case for your belief. Millions of people bought Shiller’s book. Behavioral Finance is a quickly growing discipline. Shiller was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work. The small group of Valuation-Informed Indexers who posted at the Bogleheads Forum before Lindauer took over control of the board were among the most popular posters in the community. You have long been insanely abusive in your responses to those who give expression to their sincere belief in Shiller’s findings. You do an exceedingly poor job of making the case for Buy-and-Hold. When you fail to state any reason for your beliefs, you don’t help the readers of this blog to come to a better understanding of the subject matter.

It’s sad.

The Buy-and-Holders have made major contributions. Bogle is my hero. But most of them have given up the effort to make a rational case for their beliefs given the mountain of peer-reviewed research showing that they made a mistake re the importance of exercising price discipline when buying stocks. Not many engage in the insane level of abusiveness that we see from you and your Goon friends. But not many speak out in opposition to your Goon tactics either. That’s not quite as bad perhaps but it is almost as bad. It’s certainly not honorable or edifying or inspirational or generous. It’s terribly, terribly sad.

Perhaps you are right. Perhaps P/E10 is not as powerful a tool as I believe it to be. I think it is a very powerful tool indeed. But perhaps I am wrong. If I were, I would in all likelihood be the last to see it. Given that reality, I elected to approve the comment and let your words appear here. Perhaps you are telling the true story and I am telling the false one and those who read these words need to see your point of view expressed to warn them away from placing too much confidence in my own.

I don’t believe that, however. I see too much hate coming from you to believe that you are capable of thinking these matters through carefully. I find you an intelligent person. But I believe that the emotionalism that comes to dominate you when you give a tiny bit of consideration to the possibility that you have destroyed thousands of human lives with your dogmatic “defenses” of the Buy-and-Hold concept cancels out your intelligence when you are writing on investing issues.

It is obviously not my intent to be impolite in any way. People need to figure out which side is right and which side is wrong. Your abusive behavior provides us all with an important clue. Buy-and-Holders are almost always either abusive or silent. It is rare to find one willing to engage in a calm and reasoned back-and-forth discussion on the merits of the issues in play (which makes it all that much more exciting in those rare cases when such a good soul is discovered!). Valuation-Imformed Indexers NEVER respond to challenges to their thinking with abusiveness or sarcasm or evasiveness or anger or demands for unjustified board bannings. As much as I love my Buy-and-Hold friends, I cannot help but wonder why.

I think P/E10 is a powerful tool. You don’t. That much is all part of the wonderful Learning Together game.

You hate me with a burning and undying hate. I am grateful for your contributions and what I learn from them. I think that the difference between the two emotional states tells us something important about the differences between Buy-and-Hold and Valuation-Informed Indexing, that the former is the purest and most dangerous Get Rich Quick scheme ever concocted by the human mind while the latter is the first true research-based strategy.

But then, I would, wouldn’t I?

My best and warmest wishes you you in any event, Goon friend.

Rob

“What Makes Someone a Valuation-Informed Indexer Is That He Believes That It Is Possible to Use the Historical Return Data to Inform One’s Decisions As to How Much to Change One’s Stock Allocation In Response to Either High or Low Valuations. That Is the ‘Revolution’ That Shiller Started. It Turns Everything That We Once Thought We Knew About How Stock Investing Works On Its Head. Few Investors Know This Today. All Investors Very Much Need to Know It.”

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Set forth below is the text to a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:

The people at ValueWalk are buy and holders?

The people at ValueWalk.com are value investors. They follow the Warren Buffett approach. That’s part of what Valuation-Informed Indexing is all about. VII is a combination of Buffett and Bogle. Most of the ValueWalk.com readerships buys individual stocks; they are not indexers.

Some would call them Buy-and-Holders. They believe in holding their stocks for the long term. But they are not the Bogle-type of Buy-and-Holder because they are not indexers. They focus on the long-term, as does Bogle and as do Valuation-Informed Indexers.

The question that matters is –Do they believe in changing their stock allocations in response to big changes in valuations?

To some extent, they do. I don’t believe that there are many people who participate at that site who would say that valuations don’t matter. So they certainly have some sympathy with the idea that investors should take valuations into consideration. They often post articles there on Shiller. So they clearly think that Shiller’s ideas add something to investing discussions.

But you could say most of that about the people who participate at the Bogleheads Forum, couldn’t you? Most of the Bogleheads have at least some respect for Shiller’s contributions. Most Bogleheads would agree that valuations matter. All Bogleheads focus on the long-term. The only issue re which ValueWalkers and Bogleheads are in disagreement is the question of whether it is better to invest in index funds or in individual stocks (and both camps have some partial dissenters from the general position of their camp on that issue).

Most ValueWalkers do not quantify the extent to which they need to lower their stock allocations at times of high valuations to keep their risk profiles roughly stable.

That’s they way in which the ValueWalkers are like Bogleheads (and, indeed, the followers of all investing strategies other than Valuation-Informed Indexing). That’s been the core point of contention for the entire 13 years of our discussions.

What makes someone a Valuation-Informed Indexer is that he believes that it possible to use the historical return data to inform one’s decisions as to how much to change one’s stock allocation in response to either low or high valuations. Buy-and-Holders don’t do that except to the small extent recommended by Bogle; Bogle says that it is okay to increase or lower one’s stock allocation by 15 percentage point in response to low or high valuations. My sense is that most ValueWalkers would follow the same general practice. Some would lower their stock allocations by about 15 percentage points at times of insanely high valuations, some would not do so at all. That’s pretty much what Bogleheads do. The two schools of thought are in rough agreement re this critical point, in my assessment.

This is what it is all about, Zippy. The is the “revolution” that Shiller started. The peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade Pfau shows that investors lower stock investing risk by 70 percent by changing their stock allocations in response to insanely high or low valuations (by the amount suggested by the historical return data, not some arbitrary 15 percent rule). That’s huge. That’s the biggest advance in the history of investing analysis. Lowering risk by 70 percent changes the stock investing game in a fundamental way. It turns everything we once thought we knew about how stock investing works on its head.

That’s the message that needs to get out. Stock investing risk is not stable but variable. Changing your stock allocation in response to big valuation shifts is not elective but mandatory (for those who want to keep their risk profiles stable). There is no support in the historical data for the idea of limiting one’s allocation change by some arbitrary 15 percent rule. Investors should lower their stock allocations by whatever percentage is needed to keep their risk profile roughly stable (using the historical return data as their guide to what stock allocation change is needed).

Few investors know this today. All investors very, very much need to know it.

The reason why the word has not spread for 34 years is that Shiller’s finding that risk is variable and not fixed is 100 percent in conflict with the core Buy-and-Hold belief that the market is efficient. Risk would be stable in an efficient market. Returns would fall in the pattern of a random walk in an efficient market. Shiller showed that they do not, that they never have, that they never can (because the primary determinant of stock price changes is investor emotion, not economic developments).

I hope that helps a bit.

Rob

“I Am Building on Bogle’s Work. Bogle Hates the Idea of Someone Building on His Work, Changing It and Bringing It Up to Date and Thereby Improving It. I Don’t Just Want to Show People How Dangerous the 4 Percent Rule Is. I Also Want to Show Them the Numbers You Get When You Do the Calculations Honestly, When You Don’t Commit Financial Fraud By ‘Forgetting’ to Include a Valuations Adjustment. When You Advocate a Research-Based Strategy, You Are Obligated to Keep Up With the Research. Once Bogle Comes Clean, There Are Going to Be Thousands of Researchers and Journalists and Investment Advisors Who Are Going to Feel Safe to Come Forward With Their Sincere Thoughts About How Stock Investing Works.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:

Can you point me to someone who says that they are expecting 30% returns? Quite a tall strawman.

I haven’t seen any posts on bogleheads advocating blind advocacy of the 4% rule of thumb. The majority seem to be targeting a much lower or variable swr and all are aware of lower future returns.

Buy-and-Holders don’t expect 30 percent returns. But they act as if the 30 percent returns that are reflected in their portfolio statements are real. When they are adding up their assets, they count that money. When they are seeking to determine whether they have enough to retire or not, they don’t apply a discount factor for the extent of overvaluation in the market at that point in time.

This is not a small point, Laugh. This is everything. Buy-and-Hold is rooted in the idea that the market is efficient, that stocks are always priced properly. Shiller showed that that is not so. Stock returns are real up to 6.5 percent per year. But returns above that returns are the product of investor emotion — we pump up prices because we want to fool ourselves into thinking that our financial circumstances are better than they really are.

Valuation-Informed Indexers believe in reporting things accurately.. We want to know where we really stand. We want to be able to plan effectively. Buy-and-Hold is a numbers-based approach. That’s what I love about it. When you root things in the numbers, you avoid subjectivity. You are giving people something hard to work with. But once you go to a numbers-based approach, you MUST make an effort to get the numbers right. If you don’t account for valuations, it’s impossible to get the numbers right. So Buy-and-Hold is the worst of all worlds — a numbers-based approach (which lends the thing credibility in the eyes of most smart people) that gets all the numbers wildly wrong (which makes the thing dangerous as all get-out).

You say that you have never seen blind advocacy of the 4 percent rule. Were you at the Motley Fool board in the time-period when The Great SWR Debate began? People there were using the 4 percent rule ON A DAILY BASIS to identify the day when they would hand in their resignations from high-paying jobs, jobs that they would not be able to get back if they made a mistake. And the numbers they were using were wildly off the mark! When you used a valuations adjustment, the calculation shows that a retirement that began at the top of the bubble and called for a 4 percent withdrawal had a 30 percent chance of surviving 30 years. Greaney was saying those retirements were “100 percent safe.”

When you say that the Buy-and-Holders don’t advocate “blind advocacy” of the 4 percent rule, what you mean is that they permit people to hold off on retiring until they have more assets than what the 4 percent rule would require. But they do not permit discussion of what the numbers say when a valuations adjustment is employed! I know whereof I speak re this one! I have the scars are over my body to prove the point! Why do you think that is? Why does it upset Buy-and-Holders so much for someone to show people the numbers you get using The Retirement Risk Evaluator?

It upsets them because to show people the real numbers sticks a pin in the fantasy balloon. Valuation-Informed Indexing is real. It is another numbers-based approach, so it has the same potential credibility as is possessed by Buy-and-Hold. But it goes one extra step. It reports the numbers honestly and accurately. It is the first true research-based approach (Buy-and-Hold is based on the research that existed from 1965 through 1980 but ignores the research published from 1981 forward). There’s a reason why Buy-and-Holders lose it when someone reports honestly and accurately on the peer-reviewed research in this field. Doing that makes it impossible for the Buy-and-Holders to work their scam both on themselves and on others.

Do you deny that discussion of The Retirement Risk Evaluator is prohibited at the Bogleheads Forum? If you do, you are a liar. It is prohibited. And thousands of community members there expressed a desire to be able to discuss it. The Buy-and-Holders see it as a threat. And they are right — Valuation-Informed Indexing IS a threat to Buy-and-Hold. If Shiller is right, Fama is wrong. If Valuation-Informed Indexing is the ideal strategy, Buy-and-Hold is the worst possible strategy.

The Buy-and-Holders know that, if these matters are discussed, Buy-and-Hold may end up deposited in the dustbin of history. THAT”S WHAT I WANT TO SEE HAPPEN. I believe that Buy-and-Hold was a mistake. I believe that it was a noble effort. I certainly don’t have anything bad to say about the purpose of the Buy-and-Hold project in its early days. Valuation-Informed Indexing wouldn’t exist if Buy-and-Hold had not come before it. Valuation-Informed Indexing is the fruit of the same project. Back in 2002, I intended to call this “Buy-and-Hold 2.0? or “The New Buy-and-Hold” or something like that. I am building on Bogle’s work.

BOGLE HATES THE IDEA OF SOMEONE BUILDING ON HIS WORK, changing it and bringing it up to date and thereby improving it.

No?

He hates the idea. That’s why we see all this conflict. The published rules of the Bogleheads Forum permit honest posting re the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research. Mel Lindauer and his Goon pals are brutally abusive to those who post honestly at that board. But Lindauer couldn’t get away with his dishonesty if Bogle didn’t back him up. Bogle backs him up all the way. Bogle plays the lead role in the most massive act of financial fraud in U.S. history. I love the guy. But that’s the way it is. I am a journalist and it is my job to tell people the true story. That is the true story here. It is a very big story.

No one is saying that the Bogleheads advocate blind advocacy of the 4 percent rule. That’s not the dispute. The dispute is over the fact that the Bogleheads do not permit advocacy of accurate and honest SWR numbers. I am fine with undermining support for the 4 percent rule. That rule has obviously destroyed millions of lives. But I want to take it a step forward. I don’t just want to show people how dangerous the 4 percent rule is. I also want to show them the numbers you get WHEN YOU DO THE CALCULATIONS HONESTLY, when you don’t commit financial fraud by “forgetting” to include a valuations adjustment.

Does the leadership of the Bogleheads Forum have a problem with that?

You know darn well that they do. Freakin’ Jack Bogle has a problem with that. That’s the issue here. Bogle needs to get over the fact that he made a mistake when he developed Buy-and-Hold many years back (before Shiller published his “revolutionary” [Shiller’s word] research).

If Shiller had published his revolutionary research in 1961, there never would have been a Buy-and-Hold. Bogle would have included a valuations adjustment going back to the first day and the thing would have worked and there never would have been an out-of-control bull market or an economic crisis putting millions of middle-class people out of work and we all would be living far richer lives today. But that’s not the way things played out.

We humans don’t know everything. We cannot see into the future. Buy-and-Hold was state-of-the-art stuff when Bogle founded Vanguard in the mid-1970, so that is what he went with. That part of the story is just fine. But when you advocate a research-based strategy, you are obligated to keep up with the research. Those who still advocate Buy-and-Hold today are 34 years behind in their reading of the research! Huh? Wha? That’s not acceptable, Laugh. That’s not okay. It’s not a close call. That’s not even freakin’ legal under the laws of the United States. Financial fraud is a felony. Bernie Madoff is in prison today for doing 1/500th of what Jack Bogle has done.

If you possess even the tiniest bit of sense, you secretly acknowledge that we need to somehow get out of this mess.

How do we propose that we do that?

There is only one way. Bogle needs to come clean. He needs to give that “I Was Wrong” speech (or at the very minimum an “I’m Not Sure” speech. If Bogle says either “I Was Wrong” or “I’m Not Sure,” there are going to be thousands of researchers and journalists and investment advisors who are going to feel safe to come forward with their sincere thoughts about how stock investing works in the real world. The entire nation is going to enjoy a massive Learning Experience. We are going to see more advances in the investing advice field in one year than we have seen in the past 30 years in the computer electronics field. It is going to be amazing.

Do the “leaders” of the Bogleheads Forum object to that amazing learning experience?

They sure do. They will fight to the death to stop it from taking place.

And the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being destroyed as a result of this massive act of financial fraud will put them in prison following the next price crash.

Too sad, in my assessment.

If you want a kind and hard-working and balanced and sympathetic person to work with you to try to get your prison sentence reduced a bit, you’ve got him.

If you want someone to help you in your 13-year cover-up of the errors in the Old School SWR studies and thereby to get his own name added to the list of those going to prison, please look elsewhere. Not this boy. Not freakin’ interested. No can do.

That’s the story, Laugh. As you know. As I have said THOUSANDS of times now.

If you cannot give honest investing advice, you are better off not giving investing advice at all. Investing advice that can only be “defended” with death threats and demands for unjustified board bannings and tens of thousands of acts of defamation and threats to get academic researchers fired from their jobs is not honest. Buy-and-Hold needs to be brought down. I am the one who was elected to do the job. I am going to give it my best shot. That’s my pledge to you and to my good friend Jack Bogle and to the millions of middle-class people whose financial futures have been placed in my hands.

I don’t like having to carry this level of responsibility. I didn’t ask for the job. I don’t want the job. But here we are, you know? Whether I like it or not, this is my life. So I am going to give it my best shot. I wish you the best of luck with your efforts to hold me back (while of course also wishing myself and the millions of middle-class investors whose lives are in the process of being ruined the best of luck in our efforts to clean up this field of the corruption that has come to dominate it in the Buy-and-Hold Era). That’s as far as I can go. I don’t cross The Felony Line. Not once. Not ever. Non-negotiable.

We need to move forward. We need to launch a National Debate re the IMPLICATIONS of the past 34 years of peer-reviewed research in this field. That’s my sincere take re this terribly important matter in any event.

Valuation-Informed Indexing is the future. Buy-and-Hold is the past. Millions of lives are at stake. We all need to get about the business of moving from our ignorant past into our bright and exciting and promising and HONEST future. We will all feel a lot better about ourselves on the morning after Bogle gives that speech and it is written up on the front page of the New York Times.

I hope that helps a bit.

I am 100 percent confident that honest discussion of the last 34 years of peer-reviewed research will be very, very “marketable” following announcement of your prison term.

But I could be wrong. I don’t know everything. We are all going to have to wait and see how it plays out. Nothing could be more clear.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours, my dear Goon friend.

Rob

“The Core Issue — Whether All Boards and Blogs Are Going to Begin Permitting Exploration of the Implications of the Post-1981 Research — Must Be Addressed. If It Is Not, There Is Just Going to Be More Confusion and More Ill Will Generated in the Future. No One Wants That. These Things Can Be Worked Out.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted as a comment to another blog entry at this site:

No one is going to send you an engraved invitation. That just doesn’t happen. Which of course you know. Apparently the real reason for your withdrawing from the board community, where you once were so vibrantly active, will remain a mystery.

I am willing to help out at any blog or board that is looking for the help that I am able to provide, X. I love what Buy-and-Hold used to stand for. I believe that the game changed when Shiller published his “revolutionary” (his word) research. I now promote Valuation-Informed Indexing because VII is now what Buy-and-Hold used to be in earlier days.

There is huge interest in the exploration of the implications of the new research. I know that because I have seen it with my own eyes at every board and blog to which I have posted. Every site owner should want to tap into that huge interest. Firstly, because it is the ethical thing to do — it’s financial fraud to mislead investors into thinking that the pre-1981 research is the last word on what we know about how stock investing works. Secondly, because there is a lot of money to be made in developing and promoting the first true research-based strategy. And, thirdly, because its fun to see debate re new ideas play out.

Even Buy-and-Holders should be encouraging The Great Debate. If Buy-and-Hold is the real thing, it will prevail in the debate. That makes the case for Buy-and-Hold look stronger while blocking the debate makes the case for Buy-and-Hold look very weak indeed. Also, having to respond to challenges from Valuation-Informed Indexers helps Buy-and-Holders sharpen their arguments and their thinking. And overcoming those challenges would enhance the confidence that the Buy-and-Holders feel for their strategy. That will turn out to be a big plus if ever there are times when things do not appear to be going well for Buy-and-Hold. Investors need confidence to “Stay the Course” in such times. Confidence is developed by being willing to partake in the give-and-take that is a natural part of the discussions held in all field of human endeavor with the exception of investing analysis.

I don’t with your “that doesn’t happen” comment. Unjustified board bannings should not happen. In cases in which they do, it makes all the sense in the world for a site offer to send a message letting the person who was improperly banned that a mistake was made and that the banning has been retracted. It doesn’t make much sense for a poster who has been improperly banned to return to a board where he was banned without him having heard any indication that attitudes have changed. What constructive purpose would be served by doing such a thing?

The site owners would need to make an explanation to the entire community in any event, no? If I were to return to the Bogleheads Forum or to Morningstar or to the Early Retirement Forum and I were not re-banned, do you believe that other posters would not ask me what was going on? It sure seems likely to me that many would do that. What would you have me say? We would need a statement from the site owner.

I don’t have a problem with the idea of having the statement from the site owner not address every detail of what has gone on. I of course understand that this is a delicate matter. But it does seem to me that there needs to be some sort of recognition that a change has occurred. Some issues can be finessed. But the core issue — whether all boards and blogs are going to begin permitting exploration of the implications of the post-1981 research — must be addressed. If it is not, there is just going to be more confusion and more ill will generated in the future. No one wants that. It makes sense to be diplomatic. But an effective diplomacy puts the ugly stuff truly behind us. To achieve that goal, we need to be at least a tiny bit clear on the core question.

These things can be worked out. I feel a great respect and affection for my many Buy-and-Hold friends. I have zero hard feelings towards anyone. If that attitude is shared on your side of the table, people can sit down together and work things out in a way acceptable to all. And we have great opportunities here. The Buy-and-Hold Pioneers are heroes — no one believes that more strongly than I do. They are greater heroes in my eyes than they are today in their own eyes because I see clearly how good things look on the other side of The Big Black Mountain. None of what I have done is anti-Buy-and-Hold. VII is the FULFILLMENT of the Buy-and-Hold promise. It is what Buy-and-Hold was intended to be going back to its first days.

So what we need is an acceptance of the reality that we need to do things that perhaps in ordinary circumstances “just don’t happen.” On the day when you want to work together for the good of every human being on the planet, I am here for you. That will never change. There’s no dirty name that you can call me that will cause me to question my conviction that that is the way to play this thing.

I hope that those words help a tiny bit, X.

My best and warmest wishes to you and yours.

Rob

“I Developed the Ideas Tested in the Study That I Co-Authored with Wade Pfau. Wade Did Great Work Testing Them and Proving Their Legitimacy. He Never Tried to Hog Full Credit for the Study. He Said Many Times That He Considered Me the Lead Person Behind the Development of the Valuation-Informed Indexing Concept and That He Believed That the Shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing Is the Biggest Advance That We Have Seen in the Investing Field in Many, Many Years.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted in the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

Tempted to lie???? You lie constantly. Look at your latest post. You repeat the lie that you authored a study with Wade Pfau. That is a lie. You are merely mentioned in the credits along with other people and you are not listed as an author.

Your retirement plan was a well documented failure. You now try to cover that up by blaming other people and also lying. In fact, all people need to do is google your name and the word “lies” and they will see plenty.

Wade acknowledged me in the credits as having provided “inspiration” for the study because he based it all on my ideas. He followed my posts at the Bogleheads Forum, was fascinated by what I was saying and wrote to me asking if I would be willing to work with him to produce a study on Valuation-Informed Indexing. We worked together for 16 months, exchanging hundreds of e-mails.

Wade wrote all the words that appear in the study. He performed all the statistical tests. But I think it would be fair to say that the harder job BY FAR was to come up with the ideas that were tested. Wade deserves credit as co-author of the study. But I certainly deserve credit as co-author as well.

I have no problem with him only crediting me in the acknowledgments. I do not hold a Ph.D. in Economics. So I am not qualified to be officially listed as co-author. But now that Wade has agreed (in response to your threats to destroy his career) not to continue to promote the study or Valuation-Informed Indexing, I need to tell the story of how the study was produced. We need to have that study on the front page of the New York Times and the named co-author is no longer doing what it takes. As I promote the study and the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept that it tests, I need to be honest with people about how the study came to be produced.

I developed the ideas. Wade did great work testing them and proving their legitimacy. We are co-authors. He had no qualms whatsoever saying that in the days before you Goons threatened to send defamatory e-mails to employer. Wade credited me as the primary author in numerous e-mails. He never tried to hog full credit for the study. He said many times that he considered me the lead person behind the development of Valuation-Informed Indexing and that he believed that the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance that we have seen in the investing field in many, many years.

I look forward to working with Wade again. I believe that I will be working closely with both Wade AND with Jack Bogle following the next price crash.

We’ll see.

Rob

“I Have Raised the Possibility of an Amnesty for People Who Have Continued to Promote Buy-and-Hold Because They Once Truly Believed in it and Who Are Suffering Cognitive Dissonance re the Last 34 Years of Research Because It Is Just Too Hard for Them to Accept That They Got Something Wrong. But I Can’t Adopt an Amnesty By Myself. We Have to Get Congress Involved. We Need to Have a National Debate.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:

You are not on the same page as Wade as he asked you to stop. You are not on the same page as he wont even speak with you. Sending out 30,000 emails about someone says more about you have significant issues versus the message itself.

Wake up, Rob. That is NOT normal. It is called stalking.

As for your desire to have expel say, “I was wrong”, that goes back to the central issue of you wanting to find someone else to blame for your failures. Your retirement plan failed because of you. Stop blaming other people.

The 30,000 e-mails were not all about Wade, Sammy. They were about the problem that we are having as a society making the transition from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing. The article that I referenced in the e-mails did indeed tell about how Wade and I worked for 16 months on this amazing research and about how excited he was about our findings and about how he was threatened and about how he stopped promoting the research so that the threats would stop and he could continue to be successful in his career. But the article talked about a lot of things other than Wade. And it of course said many things that put Wade in a very positive light. I love Wade. The idea that I would ever do anything to harm him in any way is of course 100 percent crazy. That’s Goon talk, nothing else.
You are right that Wade asked me to stop talking about our research and to stop talking about Valuation-Informed Indexing and not to send the e-mails. That part of your statement is accurate. But why do you think he did that? Wade himself had been promoting the study heavily before he was threatened. He had gone to the Bogleheads Forum and told people all about it. He got a generally good response. When some Goons came onto the thread and started doing what Goons do, he was very harsh in his responses to them (harsher than I usually am). Wade is not a Goon and Wade doesn’t like Goon tactics. So why did he ask me to stop telling people about our amazing research?
He is EMBARRASSED.
Nothing could be more clear. He knows that our research is of huge importance. He knows that it belongs on the front page of the New York Times. And he of course knows that he is no longer doing what needs to be done to get it there. So he is embarrassed.
He’s not the only one. Shiller is embarrassed that he has not done more. Bogle is embarrassed that he has not done more. Michael Kitces is embarrassed that he has not done more. Carl Richards is embarrassed that he has not done more. Bill Bernstein is embarrassed that he has not done more. Rick Ferri is embarrassed that he has not done more. Larry Swedroe is embarrassed that he has not done more. It would be a shorter paragraph if I wrote the names of people who are NOT embarrassed that they have not done more. We are ALL embarrassed that we have not done more.
We’re all in the same boat, Sammy. We all want the same things. We all want to know how to reduce the risk of stock investing by 70 percent. How do we get from the place where we are now to the wonderful place where we all want to be omorrow? We don’t get there by silencing each other out of embarrassment that we didn’t get there quicker, do we?
I want Wade to win the freakin’ Nobel prize, okay? There’s no bigger Wade Pfau fan than Rob Bennett.
I want Bogle to go down in history as the biggest hero to the middle class that ever lived. There’s a good chance that that is going to happen if he corrects the one error he made when he developed his strategy. There’s not too much chance if his continued unwillingness to correct the error puts us in the Second Great Depression. I am the best friend that Jack has on this planet. He doesn’t see it that way today. But it’s so. And I bet that he is going to see it that way following the next crash.
If the 34-year cover-up had never happened, there would not be one person today offering any opposition to the idea of teaching every investor all there is to know about Valuation-Informed Indexing. Our problem is that the 34-year cover-up DID happen. And it is very embarrassing to many people for this to get out.
Now —
What are we going to do about it?
I follow a two-prong approach. My rule is to be as honest as possible without crossing the line and becoming uncharitable while also being as charitable as possible without crossing the line and becoming dishonest. Does that not make sense? I am trying to HELP my Buy-and-Hold friends. Always. I want to bring all the embarrassment to an end. We can’t do that without ending the cover-up. So I want to end the cover-up. But it’s not that I want to hurt my Buy-and-Hold friends in any way. I want to PRAISE my Buy-and-Hold friends. But I only want to praise them for the things they got right, which is a lot, not for things they got wrong. I HURT my Buy-and-Hold friends when I praise them for things they got wrong. That just makes things worse. It’s because too many people have been doing things like that that we are in this mess in the first place.
I have raised the possibility of an amnesty for people who have continued to promote Buy-and-Hold because they once truly believed in it and who are suffering cognitive dissonance re the last 34 years of research because it is just too hard for them to accept that they got something wrong. That makes sense, does it not? But I can’t adopt an amnesty by myself. We have to get Congress involved. That means that we have to have a national debate. I’ve been calling for a national debate for 13 years now! That’s the answer. Once we all come clean, it all gets better and better and better with each passing day instead of worse and worse and worse.
This column entry is about going to the dentist. I told my dental troubles to a fellow I was talking to at a church picnic this weekend. The guy told me that he hasn’t been to a dentist in 10 years! He knows that he needs a root canal and he is afraid to go! Huh? Wha?
That’s sad stuff, Sammy. It’s also painfully human stuff. This fellow made his situation worse by going into denial. He needs to make a darn dentist appointment! Yes, it is going to hurt. But then the hurt is going to pass. And he won’t be walking around anymore with all that fear about what the future is going to bring.
The Buy-and-Holders are wonderful people who have done wonderful things. Shiller added a piece that they didn’t possess when they were putting together their strategy. Shiller is their friend, not their enemy! And I am their friend, not their enemy!
Wade wants to be writing about Valuation-Informed Indexing and talking about Valuation-Informed Indexing and teaching Valuation-Informed Indexing and answering questions about Valuation-Informed Indexing and taking up research project on top of research project exploring the limits of Valuation-Informed Indexing. The 16 months that we were working together were the happiest 16 months of his life. He told me so on many, many occasions.
He just doesn’t want you Goons harassing him like you have been harassing me for 13 years.
You Goons need to knock off the funny business. That’s the answer. We all win (including you Goons!) when you do that.
That’s my sincere take, in any event.
Hang in there, Sammy. It gets better. A LOT better.
I am sure.
Rob

Goon Poster to Rob: “You Have Stated What You Think Are Problems. People Have Responded As to How They Disagree. People Eventually Got Angry Because of Repetitive Comments Going in Circles.”

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Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted to another blog entry at this site:

Rob,

I think it comes down to something as simple as this. You have stated what you think are problems. People have responded as to how they disagree. You, in turn have responded how you think people are wrong to have disagreed with you. People continued to respond in disagreement. The cycle continued on for some time. Many people grew tired of the cycle and went away. Others eventually got angry because of repetitive comments going in circles. Others decided enough was enough and had you banned.

Your jury will see the posts of the thousands who expressed a desire that honest posting be permitted.

Your jury will see the published rules of all the sites where you violated the published rules thousands of times.

Your jury will see the death threats.

Your jury will see the demands for unjustified board bannings.

Your jury will see the tens of thousands of acts of defamation.

Your jury will see the hundreds of posts in which Wade Pfau showed his growing excitement over Valuation-Informed Indexing as he did more research and learned more about it.

Your jury will see the peer-reviewed research that I co-authored with Wade, research that can fairly be described as the most important research published in this field in the past three decades.

Your jury will see the posts in which Wade expressed his growing fear that you Goons were going to destroy his career and the lack of reaction by Jack Bogle when I asked for his help.

Your jury members will have lost most of their life savings in the crash.

Your jury members will be chosen from a society of people on its way or already in the Second Great Depression, a Great Depression that could have been avoided had you honored your promise to follow the site rules at the boards and blogs at which you posted.

Your jury will be hearing testimony from people like Robert Shiller and Rob Arnott and Michael Kitces, who will be backing me up by reporting on the many acts of intimidation directed at them over the years.

Your jury will see that I was so sure of what the peer-reviewed research says that I contacted 30,000 academic researchers, knowing that none of them would be able to identify any flaws in the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept.

Your jury will hearing from the professor at George Washington University who offered effusive praise for the VII concept and said that he would be in the future teaching it in his classroom and giving me credit for the concept.

Your jury will be bearing from the professor at Columbia University who said that VII follows from Shiller’s research and that he could see how it might work out very well indeed.

Your jury will be seeing the analysis done by Schenkler (a Goon!), who said that VII looked rock-solid and important.

Your jury will be hearing from the posters at the Bogleheads Forum who said that my work challenges basic premises of Buy-and-Hold in a very serious and exciting way.

Your jury will be hearing the threats you directed to Wade Pfau that I don’t even know about yet, the ones that were made in secret.

Your jury will be looking at any e-mails that Wade sent to friends at the time he was thinking of flipping to the dark side because of the threats you made to destroy his career.

Your jury will be looking at the comments made by hundreds of posters at the Diehards Forum when you Goons became so afraid of losing control of that board as a result of your use of insanely abusive tactics that you moved the entire board community to a place where it could be controlled by Goons.

Your jury will be looking at e-mails transmitted among the lawyers at Morningstar.com at the time when you Goons were demanding that I be banned and they couldn’t find a single abusive post in my file while finding thousands and thousands put forward by you Goons.

Your jury will be looking at any e-mails sent by Mel Lindauer and other Goons to Jack Bogle and any e-mails that Bogle sent back.

Your jury will be looking at my e-mail exchanges with Mike Piper in which he said that he would like to permit honest posting but was too afraid of what his readers would do if they learned how big the difference was between the Buy-and-Hold strategy that he endorsed and what the last 34 years of peer-reviewed researc tells us.

Your jury will be looking at how you followed me from site to site, threatening to destroy any board community that permitted honest posting on the safe withdrawal rate issue.

Your jury will be looking at how you burned numerous board communities to the ground because they permitted honest posting for a time.

Your jury will be looking at how the owner of the NoFeeBoards.com site pleaded with his long-time friend Ataloss not to burn his site to the ground and at how Ataloss refused to listen to those pleas.

Your jury will be looking at how John Walter Russell was universally recognized as the best numbers guy at any of our boards by all non-Goons and at how you Goons were so consumed with hate for him once he posted honestly re the SWR issue that you laughed at him on the day he died an early death.

Your jury will be looking at the e-mails that I exchanged with John Greaney in the days before I put forward my famous post of May 13, 2002, in which I asked him to co-author a book with me and he told me that was a bad idea because everyone who ever got to know him well concluded that he was the biggest asshole who ever walked Planet Earth.

And on and on and on and on and on and on.

Good luck with getting a short prison sentence with all that and more being told to your jury, Anonymous.

I think I will stick with my decision to avoid crossing The Felony Line now and forever.

Holy moly!

Rob